“Do you have to go to school on a horse?”

This is the question I get most often asked by people in Hanoi when I tell them that I am an ethnic Tai Dam from a small village in Son La province in northwest Vietnam, more than 300 km from Vietnam’s capital city.

Seven years ago, I moved to Hanoi to study and then continued to work in the city. Hanoi is one of the most built-up cities in the world, dense with buildings and a huge number of people, including many from ethnic communities, who come from many smaller towns and provinces in Vietnam to study, find work or ply their trades. But despite the size of the city and density of its population, there is a homogeneity in styles and speech: it is rare to see people wearing the dress of their own ethnic community or speaking a language other than Vietnamese. Most everybody looks, dresses and talks the same.

Vietnam officially has 54 ethnic groups people with the largest being Kinh people making up more than 85%, and the Tai ethnic people about 1.8% of the population. Since many ethnic communities live mainly in the uplands or remote mountainous areas, when they come to Hani, they get tagged as the mountain people. There is a perception among Hanoi city folk that ethnic people lead a tough life in the mountains, living in backward conditions.

Not many people in the big cities in Vietnam are able to remember the different names of the ethnic communities in Vietnam. Despite our ethnic diversity, we are often just referred to as “ethnic minority people”, in Vietnamese “dân tộc thiểu số”. This term is also often shortened to “dân tộc” or “minority tribals”. But many people from ethnic communities do not like this term because it denies our ethnic identity and diversity and each community’s unique culture and history.

It was only when I started living in Hanoi that I slowly came to realize all this. That most people in Vietnam have little knowledge or understanding of ethnic identities and culture. Since then I started thinking I need to do something to make city people know and understand ethnic communities better.

Proud not scared of my ethnic identity

When I was a third-year University student, for the first time I studied about my own ethnic group. We had some lessons about the folk literature of ethnic groups in Vietnam. The lecturer, whom I remember well during our first lesson, stood in front of the class and asked: “Is there anyone from the tribal minority in this class? Could you please tell us one of the popular folk stories about your community?” Nobody answered.

Of the 100 students in this class, I knew at least seven or eight people were not Kinh and thus meant they belonged to other ethnic groups. But I did not see a single hand being raised.

My thoughts raced as I remembered when I was young, how I had also met people who were afraid to tell others about their own ethnic identity. We are influenced by the lack of other’s understanding of our ethnic culture, we fear what they will think about us if we reveal our ethnic identity, and this lowers our confidence. I know that some children in my own village who no longer speak their Tai Dam mother tongue because their parents did not teach them even a single word. These children grew up only speaking Vietnamese. But I had grown up surrounded by the legends and songs about our Tai Dam history, life and culture. All these songs and stories came from my mother and grandmother who were proud of our ethnic Tai Dam identity. At that moment, I decided to raise my hand.

Even as I raised my hand, I felt the whispers rippling around the classroom. I stood up and introduced myself. This was my rare chance to tell my friends and classmates about who I was. I began narrating a Tai Dam love story that my mother had told me many times and which I knew by heart. When I finished my story, the classroom erupted in handclaps and laughter, everybody enjoyed the story so much. I felt a sense of relief but also pride that I had taken the first step to let the class know openly about my ethnic identity. My lecturer was very impressed and, since that day, became someone who has always supported and inspired me to write about the lives and cultures of ethnic groups in Vietnam.

“Do you have to go to school on a horse?”

This is the question I get most often asked by people in Hanoi when I tell them that I am an ethnic Tai Dam from a small village in Son La province in northwest Vietnam, more than 300 km from Vietnam’s capital city.

Seven years ago, I moved to Hanoi to study and then continued to work in the city. Hanoi is one of the most built-up cities in the world, dense with buildings and a huge number of people, including many from ethnic communities, who come from many smaller towns and provinces in Vietnam to study, find work or ply their trades. But despite the size of the city and density of its population, there is a homogeneity in styles and speech: it is rare to see people wearing the dress of their own ethnic community or speaking a language other than Vietnamese. Most everybody looks, dresses and talks the same.

Vietnam officially has 54 ethnic groups people with the largest being Kinh people making up more than 85%, and the Tai ethnic people about 1.8% of the population. Since many ethnic communities live mainly in the uplands or remote mountainous areas, when they come to Hani, they get tagged as the mountain people. There is a perception among Hanoi city folk that ethnic people lead a tough life in the mountains, living in backward conditions.

Most people in Vietnam have only a superficial understanding of ethnic communities seeing them as just being colorful and exotic without actually knowing much about ethnic lives, history, or culture. (Photo by Minh Chien.)

Not many people in the big cities in Vietnam are able to remember the different names of the ethnic communities in Vietnam. Despite our ethnic diversity, we are often just referred to as “ethnic minority people”, in Vietnamese “dân tộc thiểu số”. This term is also often shortened to “dân tộc” or “minority tribals”. But many people from ethnic communities do not like this term because it denies our ethnic identity and diversity and each community’s unique culture and history.

It was only when I started living in Hanoi that I slowly came to realize all this. That most people in Vietnam have little knowledge or understanding of ethnic identities and culture. Since then I started thinking I need to do something to make city people know and understand ethnic communities better.

Proud not scared of my ethnic identity

When I was a third-year University student, for the first time I studied about my own ethnic group. We had some lessons about the folk literature of ethnic groups in Vietnam. The lecturer, whom I remember well during our first lesson, stood in front of the class and asked: “Is there anyone from the tribal minority in this class? Could you please tell us one of the popular folk stories about your community?” Nobody answered.

Of the 100 students in this class, I knew at least seven or eight people were not Kinh and thus meant they belonged to other ethnic groups. But I did not see a single hand being raised.

My thoughts raced as I remembered when I was young, how I had also met people who were afraid to tell others about their own ethnic identity. We are influenced by the lack of other’s understanding of our ethnic culture, we fear what they will think about us if we reveal our ethnic identity, and this lowers our confidence. I know that some children in my own village who no longer speak their Tai Dam mother tongue because their parents did not teach them even a single word. These children grew up only speaking Vietnamese. But I had grown up surrounded by the legends and songs about our Tai Dam history, life and culture. All these songs and stories came from my mother and grandmother who were proud of our ethnic Tai Dam identity. At that moment, I decided to raise my hand.

Even as I raised my hand, I felt the whispers rippling around the classroom. I stood up and introduced myself. This was my rare chance to tell my friends and classmates about who I was. I began narrating a Tai Dam love story that my mother had told me many times and which I knew by heart. When I finished my story, the classroom erupted in handclaps and laughter, everybody enjoyed the story so much. I felt a sense of relief but also pride that I had taken the first step to let the class know openly about my ethnic identity. My lecturer was very impressed and, since that day, became someone who has always supported and inspired me to write about the lives and cultures of ethnic groups in Vietnam.

Since them I have written many stories and articles about the Tai Dam people for online news and magazine sites, with some stories also being published in Vietnam’s national newspapers. I have realized during the course of my life as an ethnic Tai Dam writer that changing people’s perceptions and getting them to understand other ethnic cultures has to begin with a change in how they think about ethnic communities including the terms or descriptions they use.

Networking the Tai Dam people in Hanoi

I do not know exactly how many Tai people are now living like me in Hanoi. I know that many ethnic Tai people continue to come to Hanoi to study, while many often go back and forth for work. Now there are some membership clubs for Tai people and we also use Facebook groups. These help us to share everything about Tai culture, helping each other to learn Tai script, make friends and also let other people understand about our culture. Increasingly, more young Tai people are keen to keep their ethnic language and culture alive even though they may live in the city many hundreds of kilometers away. They find many ways to express their love of ethnic learning and teach the Tai script to other people, cook Tai Dam food, or stage and take part in traditional events where they sing Tai Dam songs and promote them on videos. But this is still only a small minority; the majority of people living and working in Hanoi do not know much about the Tai Dam and our lives. With my writing, I can play an important role to bridge the distance between people of different cultures and ethnic identities and keep alive the spirit of mountain culture in the city.